Now, armed on both sides, he met the onslaught of the next two Jaguars, matching them blow for blow. The two of them flanked him at the platform’s edge. The Conquistador feinted forwards, then leapt backwards, off the platform. Both Jaguars lunged at him at the same time and were wrongfooted. They stared down in astonishment to find each other’s swords embedded in their thighs, and collapsed against each other like a pair of broken bookends.
Down in the area between the seating and the stage front, the Conquistador discarded the borrowed macuahitl and drew his pistol. With three shots he eviscerated the nearest three Jaguar Warriors. Even a stab-proof vest was no protection against a high-velocity cluster of flechettes.
Another Jaguar, however, got close enough to knock the pistol out of his hand before he could inflict any more damage with it. In retaliation, the Conquistador sliced through the man’s arm with his rapier, severing the limb at the elbow.
At that point it became clear that the Conquistador was cornered. His back was against the stage. Several very angry and determined Jaguars were closing in on him.
All at once they rushed him. Obsidian blades hammered at his armour from all directions, seeking chinks. Someone with a sense of irony might have seen the very image of what he had described onstage a moment ago, Britain embattled on all sides, a lonely island beleaguered by the might of the Empire.
He fought back gamely, but the Jaguar Warriors were giving him no quarter. Mal, at the rear of the pack, was convinced it would be only moments before a crippling sword stroke got through, maybe a fatal one. She allowed herself a quick gloat. She had done it. She had succeeded where all the previous investigating officers had not. She had pulled off a feat most would have thought impossible. The Conquistador was about to become an ugly footnote in modern British history, not to mention a significant feather in her cap. Nobody would forget tonight. This was the kind of achievement that future chief superintendents were made of.
And to think that a week ago she had been contemplating quitting the force.
A week was a long time in policing. Maybe all she’d needed was this — the opportunity to do something worthwhile with the job, the chance to feel like she was helping society rather than simply serving the state.
The pommel of a macuahitl pounded down on the Conquistador’s helmet. He fell.
Yes!
It was then, as Mal was enjoying a surge of triumph, that everything turned to shit.
One of the Jaguar Warriors masquerading as priests suddenly grabbed his neck. His eyes rolled up, his knees buckled, and he crumpled to the ground.
A hoarse shout came from the trees surrounding the amphitheatre, giving an order in a language Mal didn’t recognise. Then men came leaping down from the branches onto the topmost seats.
They hurtled down the raked rows, uttering battle cries as they ran. They were small and dark-haired, and their faces were daubed with white warpaint so as to resemble, more than anything, skulls. Their clothing mixed combat fatigues with chunky jewellery, and some of them whirled bolases above their heads while others brandished blowpipes. Everyone was startled by their unexpected appearance, and none more so than Mal.
The Jaguar Warriors turned as a volley of blowpipe darts came whipping towards them. Wherever a dart scored a hit, the man fell immediately and lay prostrate on the ground, motionless as a waxwork. The remaining, unscathed Jaguars threw themselves at the new arrivals. Linked trios of bolas balls helicoptered through the air, catching them around their necks and legs. They toppled, and as they sprawled flat out, yet more blowpipe darts rendered them inert and insensible.
They’re hunting us, Mal thought. Bringing us down like animals on the pampas plains.
One of the skull-faced attackers ran at her, bolas spinning. Before he could launch it, she narrowed the distance between them and spiked her macuahitl at him. His momentum drove him straight onto the blade, impaling him up to the hilt.
As Mal heaved the sword out, another of the skull-faces sprang. This one wasn’t taking any chances. His blowpipe was already at his lips. The range was point blank. Mal swung her sword anyway, hoping against hope that she could get him before he sent the dart on its way.
His cheeks inflated, and at the very same instant Aaronson jumped at him with a frantic cry of “No!” There was a phoooft! and Aaronson yelped. He and the skull-face tumbled to the ground together in a heap.
Mal pounced on the two tangled bodies, thrusting the point of her macuahitl down into the skull-face’s eye and piercing him to the brain.
“Aaronson! Talk to me. Are you okay?”
She turned him over. He moaned. His eyes rolled in their sockets. His limbs were floppy, rubbery. Was he dying or simply lapsing into unconsciousness? Was the poison on the dart’s tip fatal or just a powerful paralytic?
Either way, there was nothing she could do for him right now. She rose, scanning around. The attackers had cleared a path through to the Conquistador. They were after her villain. Well, they weren’t bloody well having him.
She sprinted towards him, leaping over the bodies of downed comrades. The Conquistador looked stunned and exhausted. The skull-faces were helping him to his feet. He didn’t seem to know who they were, but was plainly relieved that they had intervened.
Mal was just yards from him when a rotund individual stepped into her way. His warpaint was the most detailed of all of them, savage and snarly. Yet his eyes were weirdly compassionate. He looked almost sorry as he loosed off his bolas at her.
She tried to duck, but wasn’t fast enough. The bolas cords twined around her head, tightening in an instant. There was a triple impact, a triple burst of lightning and thunder.
Then darkness.
FIVE
8 Flint Knife 1 Monkey 1 House
(Thursday 29th November 2012)
Stuart woke up in his own bed, in his own bedroom. Not where he expected to be at all, but he was very glad he was there.
As he heaved himself to a sitting position, a tsunami of aches and pains crashed over him. His arms and legs felt stiff as cardboard. Examining himself, he found bruises almost everywhere, as though someone had planted a garden of purple and yellow orchids under his skin. His head rang like a gong.
He tottered to the bathroom in his underpants. There, amid the marble fixtures, he almost passed out. The world greyed, wavered, dimmed. A glass of cold water helped bring him back to his senses, and a second glass washed down a fistful of aspirin.
As he shuffled along the corridor to the kitchen, Stuart felt a sudden, instinctive certainty.
He wasn’t alone in the flat.
It was too early for the maid, Grace. Besides, in spite of her name, Grace moved with all the elegance of a rhino. You always knew which room she was cleaning, by the thudding footfalls and the clunk of ornaments not quite being broken.
Someone was here and doing their best to keep quiet.
Razor-alert, Stuart slid a carving knife out of the block on the kitchen counter. The intruder was in the living room. Stuart padded to the connecting door, which stood slightly ajar. He peeked through the crack. He had a view of half the room and there was nobody in sight, but the certainty remained. It was something in the air, in the sounds of the flat; something almost unconscious.
He eased the door open just enough to slip through sideways. He held the carving knife at his hip in a backhand grip, the blunt edge of the blade resting against his forearm. It wasn’t the most precise of weapons but, in experienced hands, it would serve.